What’s more American than these stocks? These are not small trimmings. He sold more than half of his 52 million shares of Johnson & Johnson and he sold it at a 20-year low relative to its yield. That doesn’t sound like “Buy America.” That sounds like “Sell America.” Yet, on Oct. 16, 2008, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 9000 and the S&P 500 at 950, Buffett penned a now-famous op-ed submission to The New York Times saying it was time to buy America. Those who bought America that day are feeling … well, downright un-American. Or at least they’re feeling poorer.

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No, these are sales by Buffett. The “out” Buffett always has is that he buys for the long term. I have no problem with that if you are really rich because you aren’t worrying about losing your house or putting food on the table or putting a kid through school. I have argued mightily that it isn’t a fair time frame for the hundreds of millions of Americans — lotsa people — who aren’t rich. However, as long as Buffett was buying and not selling, or as long as he was at least holding, you couldn’t knock him.

But now it turns out he’s putting a terminal value on something we thought we were to hold forever.